"The House of Commons, with an almost prodigal, but a wise liberality, has placed at the disposal of the Irish Government large and ample funds for the purposes of national education. These funds are administered on a plan opposed to the feelings of all creeds and all classes of the Irish nation. Ninety-nine out of every hundred Irishmen condemn it. There is not an Irish constituency from Bandon to Derry in which any man could be returned as an advocate of the national system, if the question were purely one of its approval or disapproval. There is not a parish in Ireland in which the inhabitants, if they had their choice, would adopt it as the system of their parish school. Right or wrong, the present system is one forced, by official coercion, on the Irish people. It is a national system, maintained and supported in defiance of the sentiment of the nation"—(p. viii.)
Looking at the national system in a religious point of view, Mr. Butt adds, that it is in antagonism with the wishes and feelings of all classes of the Irish people.
"There is no nation on earth who cherish religious feelings with a more deep and enthusiastic devotion than do the Irish. They are the very last people among whom the experiment of an education, which excludes the fulness of religious teaching, should be tried. The result of the experiment has been, that by all creeds and classes of Irishmen, the 'national' system is condemned. All who avail themselves of it do so grudgingly and of necessity. It is a system forced upon the people by their rulers.... It is for the Irish nation themselves to judge of the education which is suited to the wants of the Irish poor. The system which is condemned by the universal suffrage of the Irish nation, is unfit for Ireland, because it is so condemned—(p. ix.)
"If we are driven to justify our opinions, we have only to refer to the example of England. In England, every school that receives aid from the funds of the State, is a school avowedly teaching the doctrines of some religious body. Full and unrestricted religious instruction is made an essential part of national education in England. In Ireland, a school which adopts that instruction as its rule, is consequently placed under a ban, and denied all assistance from the national funds. It matters not whether the instruction be Protestant or Catholic, it equally condemns the school in the eyes of our rulers"—p. x.
Treating of the difference between the systems prevailing in England and Ireland, Mr. Butt adds:—
"In point of principle, no reason can be assigned for the difference between England and Ireland. If it be wrong in Ireland to endow and aid a purely Roman Catholic school, it is equally so in England. The difference established between the two countries can neither be justified nor accounted for upon any rational principle. It fosters the belief in the mind of every Irishman that his country is treated as an inferior. In many Irishmen it promotes the belief that religious instruction, which is free in English schools, is placed under restriction in Ireland, because the faith of the majority of the Irish people is proscribed"—(p. xi.)
And may we not ask has not the Irish Catholic sufficient grounds for adopting this opinion? Has not all the legislation of the country for centuries been directed to the destruction of Catholicity?
The question is next referred to of the tendency of the national system to throw the whole education of the country into the hands of the government.
"I do not shrink from inviting your consideration to the complaint—that the Irish national system, as now constituted, is one gigantic contrivance for bringing the whole education of Ireland under government control. I appeal with confidence to you, as an English statesman, against the attempt to 'Anglicise' the education of the Irish people—against the project of bringing up, in government academies, an army of schoolmasters, who, in school, and still more out of school, are to form for government a moral and intellectual police—against the system of lavish bribery by which it is plainly proposed to attract all talent in the humbler classes of Irishmen into the service of an anti-Irish Board—against the institution in our country of a great system of universal education, subject to influences that are not Irish, and administered in a spirit of distrust of the whole Irish people, their national prejudices, and their religion"—(p. xii.)
In the course of the work, proofs are given of the way in which it was sought to establish government influence. In the beginning, according to the letter of Lord Stanley, only one model school was to be erected in Ireland, and the minor schools through the country were to remain quite independent. In 1835, the commissioners began to manifest more extensive designs, and in a report to Lord Mulgrave, it was proposed to establish a model school in each county, to take the training of all the teachers of the kingdom into the hands of the Board, and, at the same time, the plan was adopted to introduce books treating of common Christianity, and compiled by Dr. Whateley, and, in fact, to make the authority of the commissioners paramount in everything connected with the education of the future generations in Ireland. On this Mr. Butt observes:—